There are so bewilderingly many laws in the Outside World. We of the circus know only one law--simple and unfailing. The Show must... go on.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Winter and summer till old age began My circus animals were all on show,... Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot, Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Most days I feel like an acrobat high above a crowd out of which my own parents, my in-laws, potential employers, phantoms of "oth...er women who do it" and a thousand faceless eyes stare up.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The way to go to the circus, however, is with someone who has seen perhaps one theatrical performance before in his life and that ...in the High School hall.... The scales of sophistication are struck from your eyes and you see in the circus a gathering of men and women who are able to do things as a matter of course which you couldn't do if your life depended on it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One key, one solution to the mysteries of the human condition, one solution to the old knots of fate, freedom, and foreknowledge, ...exists, the propounding, namely, of the double consciousness. A man must ride alternately on the horses of his private and public nature, as the equestrians in the circus throw themselves nimbly from horse to horse, or plant one foot on the back of one, and the other foot on the back of the other.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Constantly risking absurdity and death... whenever he performs above the heads of his audience the poet like an acrobat climbs on rime to a high wire of his own making.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As he walks away on his own two feet--the toddler's body-mind has reached its moment of perfection. The world is his and he the mi...ghty conqueror of all he beholds.... As long as mother sticks around in the wings, the mighty acrobat confidently performs his trick of twirling in circles, walking on tiptoe, jumping, climbing, staring, naming. He is joyous, filled with his grandeur and wondrous omnipotence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Oh, play that thing! Mute glorious Storyvilles Others may license, grouping round their chairs... Sporting-house girls like circus tigers....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Much has already been written of the uncanny ways in which Chaplin and Keaton seem to divide so much of the world, so precisely, b...etween them. Charlie the sentimentalist and Buster the ironist, the dancer and the acrobat, the critic of capitalist society and the deviser of happy-ending Edens outside of society--all these distinctions are well-known and important. But the most richly creative difference between these geniuses is in their language--not the language in their films (how wonderful it is that they are forever silent) but the language that their films make real. For Chaplin the space of the world is always and insidiously dangerous, perhaps even murderous. For Keaton, that same space is, breathtakingly, his toy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »